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Halloween

Alrighty, so …I went to WalMart (and for those of you who know NOTHING about me, which I’m assuming is a lot of you,….I LOVE WalMart…It’s my happy place). Anyway, I went to my happy place thinking it was going to be like it always is. I was wrong. There was a Christmas tree set up just inside the doors. Christmas music was playing. Christmas candy was being sold. (I just read Earnest Hemmingway a few days ago so please forgive me if my sentences follow his iceberg theory.)

I’m a little confused. Didn’t we just have halloween? Shouldn’t all of the Halloween candy be on sale before the Christmas candy goes on the shelves? Why is all of this Christmas stuff out when it’s still the first week in November? We haven’t even had Thanksgiving!! **There’s a question, why does WalMart praise Halloween, skip Thanksgiving, and promote the heck out of Christmas?** Why do people feel it’s okay to play Christmas music this early? I can see playing it around Thanksgiving as sort of a pre-game Christmas thing, but…there’s still 50 days until Christmas.

It sounds bad, but another thing I can’t stand is the people that stand outside the doors and ring their bells trying to get you to donate all of your extra cash to charity. I’m not harping on charities or saying that they’re just a waste of time but do the volunteers have to use bells? Do they have to abuse the bells? I’m telling you, nine times out of ten I’m sure people run through the doors, get their groceries and then run back out claiming they have no extra change because they can’t stand the sound of the bell. Hasn’t the Salvation Army figured out that they might get more donations if they armed their volunteers with something other and that annoying bell? You would think so, but every year they’re out there with the same tools, same santa costume, same red bucket. ….They’ll be coming soon too. Watch out.

So this past weekend I went home just to surprise my friend for her eighteenth birthday and for Halloween. I just want to say outright that I had a BLAST and so did she. There are lots of pictures on Facebook and there’s going to be two videos as well.

Jessica, my roommate, drove me back home on Friday, after my math class. Around eight o’clock I want over to Kayla’s house. She was having a Halloween party for everyone in the saxophone section…so, yes, I kind of crashed her party, BUT I had her mom’s permission and I knew she (Kayla) wouldn’t mind. So anyway, I crashed this party and then around 11pm, when everyone else was leaving, I stayed and we had a sleepover. We stayed up until 3 o’clock in the morning and slept in until 10:30…I slept on the floor, but it was still a great sleep. **Wow, that kind of sounds awkward, but oh well.**

As if showing up and surprising the bajeezus out of Kayla wasn’t enough, I also had some gifts for her and her sister, Audrey. I went back home to get the pizza that I’d bought on Friday (it was Shakespeare’s and it was/is her favorite pizza). That might sound a little weird unless I explain that Kayla and her family used to live in Columbia for quite some time and then they moved to St. Louis where they live now. Later in the day I also brought her candles that spelled out her name, glow in the dark Halloween silly bandz, a “Mizzou” t-shirt (one for her and one for her sister), two CD’s that I burned, AND a scrapbook that I had been working on since this past summer. The reason I did all of this was, yes, she is my best (and only) friend BUT she made MY eighteenth birthday really fun and special and I wanted to do the same for her.

On Sunday I went over to her house around 6 o’clock (dressed up in my Halloween costume of course) and we went trick or treating with two of her other friends. I was dressed as Daphne from the Scooby Doo gang, she was dressed as Velma, and her other two friends were dressed as Shaggy and Fred. Now, you might say “oh, you’re a college student…you’re WAY too old to be trick or treating.” My response to that would be that I had no intention of actually going door to door COLLECTING candy, I just wanted to walk around and look at everyone else’s costumes. Well, by 8:30 that night I had a full bag of candy and it’s all GOOD candy. By that time I also had a blister on the back of my left heel and a blister the size of my pinky toe. (Now that it’s getting colder I’m forced to wear tennis shoes. Needless to say, my foot is killing me and there’s nothing I can do about it right now [and probably not even until after I’m done working out at 10 o’clock tonight].)

I’m pretty tired this morning (it’s Monday…) because I had to get up at 6:15 so Jessica could pick me up at 7:30 so we could get back to Mizzou. We got back around 9:15, I ran to the dining hall that I work at to stuff my face really quick (because I was starving), and then got on my bike and pedaled as fast as I could to my history class….where I am now (well, at least for three more minutes).

And that’s the end of that story. Happy Halloween!

P.S.-OH MY GOSH! I ALMOST FORGOT! When I was trick or treating, I accidentally went to two KU houses (don’t worry…I didn’t take their candy, but I did make funny faces at them after they closed the door). 😀